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Asking the Stupid Questions since 1971

Category Archives: politics

I do not think I come from unique circumstances, nor that I am exceptionally gifted an observer, but I continue to be astonished at the number of people I know who do not understand what it is that President Trump is doing or how it can happen here. The common explanation for this is that Some People have been living in a bubble, but that’s not entirely correct. There is indeed proximity bias, but there have also been perversions of the available data which are only visible if you read the footnotes. The unemployment rate is the best example: it’s low — only if neither those people who are no longer looking for work, nor those who are imprisoned and have no choice about the work they do, are counted. Makes things look rosy, yes?

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

…

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our Nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else—public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance [emphasis mine] to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.

When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

The Bible tells us, “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”

The world was not an easy place before Trump, except for a lot of Americans. It was not a safe place, except for a lot of Americans. Obama was not Flash Gordon, nor was Bush, nor Clinton, nor Bush, nor Reagan, nor Carter, nor Ford, nor Nixon, nor Johnson, nor Kennedy, nor Eisenhower, nor Truman.

This particular problem has been brewing for some time, and the solution is not in who is President.

“When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies like ISIS,” Congressman Ken Buck stated. “This amendment refocuses the military on our real enemies.”

It’s rather extraordinary how short-sighted some people can be. Whether or not the gradual increase in sea level is the result of a global increase in temperatures triggered by the Industrial Age or not, the sea is rising. A hopeful attitude in response to any change is to say that we’ll adapt; it won’t be so bad. Well, sure, if we don’t refuse to adapt.

“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.”

Many of us here in America have been talking past each other for decades, and don’t seem to realize that. Some do. Most use what we consider terms of opprobrium in an argument, attempting to persuade another to our view of correctness, not understanding that others don’t attach the same connotations to the terms. Each argument disintegrates into preaching to the choir rather than attempting to persuade another. Then, if such difference of opinion is pointed out, one insists no true American could hold such views. We have shared values, after all. That may well be, but those shared values are to some degree wishful thinking. Perhaps instead we share only fear and enemies. Enemies are certainly more concrete than values.

It would not do to assume that we agree what “American” is. And if you think that idea is absurd, you need to get out more.

There’s some discussion in the news that the Russians might be influencing the results of the U.S. presidential election by hacking the machines various jurisdictions use to register voters, as well as those that count the votes.

Ha!

Those of us in the trade have been warning about this for years, most notably Freedom to Tinker — several researchers at Princeton University — and consider the introduction of digital voting machines an over-reaction to the brouhaha preceeding Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). There was no reason for Bush v. Gore, and there was no reason to “upgrade” the voting systems. There was only impatience. But what do we plebeians know?

Anyhoo, the computers eventually settled upon by many jurisdictions don’t have any means of verifying that the votes cast are the votes counted, which is the basic problem here. If one can’t tell that the vote has changed, how can one trust the results?

One can’t.

Which is what makes this particular threat interesting.

If one cannot trust the result because one cannot trust the process, then one need only cast doubt upon the process in order to make the result untrustworthy. In short, it’s not necessary for the Russians to have actually hacked the voting machines. It’s only necessary for people to think that it’s possible that the Russians might have hacked the voting machines.

Luckily there’s an easy fix for this problem: use paper and count the votes by hand.

What prevents the signatories of the TPP or TTIP, and their ilk, from just saying no when the investor-state dispute settlement provisions don’t go the way they’d want? That is, if the state still has a monopoly on the use of force, can’t they just kill the investors?

Or, to put it another way, isn’t binding arbitration only binding if one feels bound by it?

Huh? Apparently the school budget was up for approval on Tuesday. I didn’t notice.

This is the first year since I became a property owner that I’ve not paid attention to the various shenanigans that attend the school budget process in New York. I think this means that my attempt to ignore those things whose outcome I have little probability of affecting is working. Maybe next year I’ll add Federal surveillance policy to that list.

The school board had already decided to close the Arthur S. May Elementary School building instead of altering it for ADA compliance. In my opinion, this is a grave error — location is the only thing that matters in real estate. The location of the Arlington Middle School next to a major highway and a dilapidated K-Mart is part of the urban removal tragedy of Poughkeepsie, though there are a handful of homes nearby.

The district may be able to find someone to rent Arthur S. May; it’s got a great location.

What this does mean, however, is that I’m still really glad that I have four children and so can calculate my property tax as tuition per child.

A: We need standards to ensure that all students, no matter where they live, are prepared for success in postsecondary education and the workforce.

Let’s assume for a moment that that is the goal of primary and secondary education. (Let’s also ignore the missing hyphen between post and secondary.) Will full-day Kindergarten help in achieving this goal?

No.

Why not?

Because extreme differences in academic ability collapse by the fourth grade. All of us, including children, learn at different rates. In general, those differences disappear on average by the time we are about ten years old, or fourth grade. I understand the difficulty of scientific experiments on humans, but we do what we can; and what we can do shows that there’s no evidence that learning a subject earlier makes a difference.

By the time the budget discussions arrive, the costs are fixed in contracts, so staff reductions are the only option. It’s during contract negotiations that the board needs to consider the effect on the budget. If the budget is capped at a 2% annual increase, then don’t agree to contracts that will result in a 4.29% increase.

I should have written the costs the district controls are fixed in contracts. There are other costs imposed by the United States and New York State which can change the budget numbers significantly. These include, among other things, required administrative reporting changes, curriculum changes, and, most predictably, contributions to the pension funds. The U.S. and New York typically pass these costs on to the localities. It is reasonable for localities to support the cost of public education, but not when they have not been party to the decisions that have increased those costs.

But, as in previous years, Arlington has not yet confronted the need to project long-term budget impacts during contract negotiations, and will, once again, need to discover $4,000,000 in reserve funds, operating cost reductions, and a tax increase to cover an increase in labor costs. The district’s costs are primarily labor-related, so any persistent reduction in cost must consider labor. And if the district cannot reduce labor costs caused by Washington and Albany, then it must address those it can.

Of course not, you stupid shit. They just started campaigning. It’s a [expletive and a half] horse race. Did you see the 137th Kentucky Derby last weekend? That was a fun two minutes. Shackleford started off well in front of the pack and led into the final stretch. But he didn’t win, did he? The favorite? He lost too. Animal Kingdom came up from 13th place to win.

Who the fuck cares who the front-runner is? It means nothing except bullshit headlines and cheap stories for the likes of you.

Apparently you neglected to read my last letter, but with the fast approach of National Train Day and the increase in oil prices making your services slightly more competitive, I thought it might be helpful to bring up the topic again.

Your pricing skills suck. Are you intentionally trying to lose money and ridership?

Suppose that a family of four — or six — wanted to travel to Disney World from New York. This is a not uncommon occurrence, and provides the basis for over 250 flights per day by many airlines from more than five airports in the New York metropolitan area. The cost of air travel is currently going up, up, up due to some small upset over in the oil-producing regions, so where a seat on JetBlue from JFK to MCO would once have cost $50, it’s now between $100 and $150. This is an opportunity! And you’re missing it!

And you’re missing it in a big way. Look, I understand that it takes capital to improve infrastructure, and that you’re hobbled by riding on tracks owned by others, but it’s almost like you’ve intentionally set your prices to encourage folks to drive. For me to take a family of six to Disney World by plane costs almost as much as staying in one of Disney’s “moderate” resorts and going to all of the parks every day of my visit, so I, and many others, might be looking for a slightly less wallet-reducing option. And the first thing that comes to mind is driving. But who wants to drive the first 24 hours of their vacation? Or, who wants to spend three days driving, two days there, and three days driving back? No one. But the other option is too expensive. Buses? Ha! That’s worse than driving, especially with little kids. How about the train?

This is where you’re completely missing the opportunity. The cost per seat from, for example, New York Penn Station to Orlando is $106 per person for a 21 hour trip. That’s slightly cheaper than the more expensive JetBlue seat, but you forget the time differential. Time is, after all, money, which is why travelers choose to fly on JetBlue for 2 hours for $150 instead of suffer on Amtrak for 21 hours for $106. You need to take your utter inability to get anywhere fast into account when pricing your service. And when you’re more expensive, even if only by $7, than the cheapest option, you completely lose. No one wants to pay more money for the privilege of getting somewhere slower.

Yet the cost of airfare gets worse as one moves away from hub airports. This is where you have an advantage. It costs less to feed from Poughkeepsie to New York and thence to Orlando than it does for JetBlue to fly direct from Newburgh to Orlando. In terms of convenience for me, I’d much rather leave from Poughkeepsie than from JFK. If you can get your prices down to something approaching the cost of gasoline plus a hotel room, you might have a fighting chance in earning my dollar. But then you totally destroy any opportunity you had with the sleeper options. $358 for a room for two people? $658 for a slightly larger one? What? You think you’re a hotel on Times Square? I’m just looking for a contained, flat place for my kids to lie down so that they don’t spend the night in the bar car.

You have two options: lower your prices, or build faster trains. Because we’re sure as Hell not going to pay $658 for two cots or $640 for uncomfortable seats when we could pay less than that on gas and a swank room at the Holiday Inn Express.

I don’t think their plea for me to contact my legislators had the result they intended.

New York is generally ignored during presidential campaigns because the results are too predictable. Why should the candidate of any party bother to stop here when it’s obvious that one of the candidates will win by a landslide?

New York is not the only State with this problem. Any State which allocates all of its Electors to the person winning a simple majority of the vote, and then proceeds to vote consistently for one party over another, loses influence. That State is now safe, reliable, the old girlfriend you turn to for brief satisfaction when the one you lust after pushes you away. Sure, she’s good for a screw, but who really cares what she thinks?

While I would like to see changes in how New York State allocates its Electors, I do not support the proposal to give our Electors to the candidate which wins a majority of the national popular vote in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. (What? Puerto Rico and the Territories still don’t count? And you call yourself a democrat!) This particular effort is an attempt to ensure that the person who wins the Presidency is the person preferred by the majority of all voters, but didn’t gain much traction until the supposed wrong done to Mr. Albert Gore in 2000. Because the problem was obviously the system, and not our impatience.*

If we ignore historical curiousities that restricted the electorate, and assume that the voters expressed the Will of the People, it’s rare that the winner of the popular choice has lost the Presidency. There have been 56 elections under the present system. Of those 56, 4 were not won by the winner of the popular vote.** That’s only 7.14%.

I would prefer, instead, that New York allocate its Electors proportionately, rather than in the winner-take-all manner that it does now. And I would like for New York to use the so-called instant run-off ballot, which would allow voters to rank several candidates according to their preferences.

The problem with fracking, as with other environmental issues, is one of negative externalities. That is, the company extracting the resource does not bear the full costs of its operations, and certainly not the full costs of its failures. This creates a moral hazard, both at the extraction company, which cares nothing for the people who can no longer drink their water, and in the government, which aligns itself with the corporation rather than the citizens, as in Pennsylvania.

Beyond that, I fail to understand why an industry that burns off natural gas from oil wells as waste would be granted the privilege to extract natural gas in a manner that most likely has adverse effects.

The Board of Education of the Arlington Central School District has made the difficult decision to close an elementary school in order to reduce the district’s budget.There are obviously consequences to this decision other than the money involved. Some are logistical, such as the effect on bus routes and the dispersion of the population to other buildings. Some are emotional; the school to be closed, Lagrange Elementary School, has been an integral part of that community since 1966.

My comments are not on those subjects, which made the decision difficult, but on the choices the Board has made in the overall budget, and particularly with regard to the closing of the school building.

A review of the school budget process in New York is in order. The Superintendent proposes a budget. The Board adopts the budget and submits it to the voters in the school district for approval. If the budget is not approved by the voters, then the Board may submit the same budget or a revised budget for a second vote, or adopt a contingency budget. If the budget is not approved in the second vote, then the Board must adopt the contingency budget. The contingency budget allows for certain expenditures, but not others, and will increase costs over last year’s budget. More details on the nature of contingency budgets are available from the New York State Department of Education.

This reduces the budget by $1,109,160, bringing the budget to budget increase down to 1.7%.

That number is interesting because it comes directly from the Superintendent’s school closing report, page 5.

The elementary school model yielded the following estimates of cost savings for closing:

Building not used and 0 regular teaching positions are eliminated: $1,292,160

Building not used and 8 regular teaching positions are eliminated: 1,885,760

Building used for other District purposes and 0 regular teaching
positions are eliminated: 1,109,160[emphasis mine]

Building used for other District purposes and 8 regular teaching positions are eliminated: 1,702,760

See Exhibit 3 on page 11 of the report. This shows how the cost savings is determined: by eliminating 26.8 positions associated exclusively with the school. Of particular interest is the decision not to eliminate any teaching positions as a result of closing the school. Not only are the students being re-assigned to other schools, but so are the teachers. This is perhaps kind to the students: if they are left back, then they might encounter a familiar teacher in the new school. However, if the eight average teaching positions used in the estimate were eliminated, the district would see an additional $600,000 in savings.

The Board has already made the tough decision to close a school. What happens if the voters think that small sacrifice isn’t enough, and require a contingency budget?

If the budget is defeated again, the District must adopt a “contingency budget.” This will require a further reduction of $1.6 million. In addition to the 25 positions eliminated by closing a school, the contingency budget would require that an additional 18.5 teachers lose their jobs. [emphasis mine]

But what, specifically, does the Board say would be cut?

The superintendent has recommended several cuts to core instructional programs. These include:

Reducing selected high school electives and AP courses

Eliminating fourth grade band and orchestra

Reducing the middle school and high school band, orchestra, and choral programs

Decreasing teaming for 6th grade students, which will significantly raise class size at this grade level.

Cutting high school sports

Eliminating all middle school competitive sports

This is where it gets really interesting, at least from a political or marketing perspective.

The District has been very helpful in posting which line items might be cut, and their descriptions so we can see for ourselves the numbers underlying the summary description of the cuts. Notice which of these particular line items, which I have helpfully marked in red, have been selected for inclusion in the summary.

Reduce instrumental small group lessons in middle School to alternate weeks

267,120

4.0

74

Reduce small group instrumental lessons in high school to alternate weeks

200,340

3.0

75

Eliminate all instrumental lessons or band groups to alternate days gr. 6-8

267,120

4.0

76

Chorus to meet on alternate days in middle schools instead of daily

100,170

1.5

77

Reduce middle school hall monitors

42,745

1.5

79

Eliminate all sports program at middle schools

157,810

80

Eliminate all intramural program at middle schools

30,000

81

Reduce sports and co – curricular activities at high school

56,236

82

Reduce AHS house assistant principal work year from 12 to 10 months

65,582

partials

83

Eliminate two AHS house assistant principals

157,800

2.0

86

Eliminate one district supervisor

111,919

1.0

87

Teaching assistants Tier Three Gr. K-12

1,167,388

47.0

88

Eliminate all remaining busses after school grades 6-12

94,298

hours

New Equipment (required by State law)

107,754

This budget is being sold to the voters by targeting those items the voters actually care about: sports and music. NONE of the sports line items result in a staff reduction. These are stipends being paid to the teachers and coaches for their time. The coaches will still be employed. The music teachers on the other hand, will not be. A couple of years ago, the Mahopac School District was in a similar situation, and a second defeat at the polls resulted in cutting the sports programs. The Mahopac Sports Association picked up the cost. In the detailed description of the line item, the District notes:

The following criteria were used to establish these potential cuts …. Activities that have significant financial parental support which might be available to assist in funding recovery.

But of even more interest is that none of these cuts resulted in a reduction of administrative staff or salary.

The bulk of the cost of running a school is labor, primarily teachers but also administrative staff, cooks, mechanics, drivers, and custodians. The bulk of the cost is not textbooks. It is not sports equipment. It is not heating and cooling. It is salaries and benefits.

And the District, in comparison to others in New York, does fairly well at keeping those costs down. The challenge is in slowing or halting the rate of increase, and in doing so to find a way to avoid increasing taxes. Without understanding where the costs are, and without facing those costs head on, we will — as we have been for each year in recent memory — be faced once again with the same difficult choices year after year.

This year’s budget does not directly address these costs in a systematic fashion. It eliminates staff positions instead. That adjustment changes future budget projections, but only because those staff are no longer employed. The factors which caused this year’s budget to increase by $5 million are still there. Next year’s will as well.

To quote again from the Superintendent’s report,

The credibility and trustworthiness of the Superintendent of Schools and the Board of Education will hang in the balance and will impact the School District long into the future.

p.s. The district consistently uses the alternate spelling of buses, which drives me nuts.

According to Google Maps, the trip is 5 hours 12 minutes by car, to travel 309 miles. Our van gets 25 miles per gallon on average, or 12 1/3 gallons from here to there. Let’s call it 13 gallons for imprecision. Gasoline currently costs roughly $3.00 per gallon. One way, the trip would cost, out of pocket, $39 plus lunch and dinner for six. If we eat at a restaurant, lunch or dinner tends to run between $50 and $60. Thus far, from here to there would be $159 by car.

But you? You want $241.50 to make the trip in 9 hours 30 minutes? Taking the train might be more relaxing than driving for six hours with four kids strapped into car seats, but trying to keep them in the same train car, much less the same seats, for ten hours would be well nigh impossible. They will have gone stir crazy before we reach Albany. And you and I both know that your timetables are a rough approximation: The last time I rode Amtrak you said the trip would take 8 hours; it took 12. For this you want me to pay almost six times as much as driving?

That was weekend pricing. Let’s look at the weekdays. Apparently there’s a deal if I take The Adirondack over the weekend, but I didn’t notice that in the price. Weekday prices drop the fare considerably, once this discount takes effect: $148.

BUT, it’s TEN HOURS.

And only a snack car on the train?

No, thank you.

Suppose that I were to travel alone. For that you ask $69. I could have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes and a pair of sunglasses, and make it there by morning for less than that.

I like trains; I do. But at the rates you charge, your only customers are those with time to spare, those without travel options, the price-insensitive, or die-hard railfans such as Vice President Biden. That’s no way to make a profit.

Oh, I think I just realized how you’ve determined the prices. You’re charging by the hour. OK. Let’s see how that compares.

$148.5 divided by 9.5 hours is $15.63 per hour. That sounds cheap. How does my driving compare? $159 divided by 5.25 is $30.28 per hour. Wait, I forgot to factor in bathroom breaks and time for casual dining: $159/8.25 = $19.27/hour. Ah, I see now. That makes perfect sense. The trip length is also almost the same. Let’s stop at a park for some running around and exercise: $159/9.5 = $16.73/hour.

Are you going to throw in dinner while we’re on the train? I didn’t think so. Let’s remove that from the equation: $39/9.5 = $4.10/hour.